In 2002, the Borax Sustainable Development (SD) team faced one of its major challenges: how to fully integrate sustainable development into the Borax culture and business. Successful integration means that business and project planning includes both qualitative and quantitative ways to balance social, environmental and economic imperatives. Full integration also lets us transition accountability for setting and meeting targets from a dedicated team to individual employees.

The SD project team conducted a gap analysis comparing the 25 most important sustainable development metrics with the metrics recorded on department and executive scorecards. Scorecards are tracking mechanisms Borax uses to align individual performance with business objectives. Examples of those metrics include:

Objective One
Indicator:  Safety performance
Key metric:  Number of environmental, health and safety incidents affecting the local community
Target:  Zero

Objective Two
Indicator:  Internal and external consultation with relevant stakeholders
Key metric:  Number of consultation meetings
Target:  At least one per year

Objective Three
Indicator:  Use of fresh water in mining operations to control dust on haul roads
Key metric:  Gallons of water used per ton of ore or overburden moved per mile driven
Target:  Five percent reduction

Objective Four
Indicator:  Investment in local communities
Key metric:    of local economy supported by Borax (Boron = 54%)
Target:  No target; for tracking purposes only

Objective Five
Indicator:  Products’ impact on the environment over time
Key metric:  Number of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) conducted
Target:  Complete LCAs on products manufactured in the U.S. by 2003

The gap analysis verified that most key metrics and targets appeared on at least one employee’s scorecard. New assignments were made to fill the gaps. As a result of this process, we took a significant step toward erasing the line between business objectives and sustainable development objectives – and reached another milestone in our journey to make sustainable development a way of life at Borax.